Finally. That rule is asinine. And the article mentions the 3:1 rule is on the blocks. Two going down, and a few more to go...

The weight rule is one of the best moves the UCI ever made. We now have very reliable and well-performing machines, durable and sturdy, well-functioning components and solid and reliable wheelsets - all available to the public. We're in a far better position now than the year 2000.

Lowering the weight rule will only give more of an advantage to the skinny climbers. The GTs are dominated now by an obsession with maximizing W/kg and are decided on just a few decisive climbs. Very little tactics or real bike racing involved. Very boring. This will make it even worse.

3:1 rule was a very reasonable compromise between optimizing aero properties and not turning into the IHPVA. The truly awful monstrosities that were starting to dominate TTing in the 90s were getting ridiculous. The UCI saved us from that.

"Primacy of man over machine" is the central point of the Lugano charter. The weight and aero rules forced constraints on manufacturers and they learned how to optimize design and materials, rather than reduce weight and drag to extremes, and we're all the better for it. Bikes are a heck of a lot safer now as well.

Bike racing is about the competition and battle between riders - this involves strength, skill and savvy and makes it a beautiful, compulsive sport. Technology should always be secondary - that's for F1 and IHPVA.

Parcours has more to do with who makes a good GT contender than equipment weight. As well as that, light riders must propel a proportionately larger mass at all times and can do nothing about it.


A rule based on an aesthetic objection is a lingering testimony of the euro-centric traditionalism of the 70-80s.

New rider: Why do we do this?
Old guard: It is the way.

The problem is we have so many mountain top finishes now. This used not be the case. W/Kg is everything now. TdF is a slimming competition.. If there was a descent into the nearest village after the last col you would never hear another grumble about bike weight again.

At some stage we have to decide what is a racing bike and what is not. The 3:1 rule and double diamond stipulation place very reasonable limits on bike design. Another important aspect of the sport is that the public can relate to it - a bike should resemble what the public thinks a bike looks like. So yes, aesthetics are important.

That whole post was meant to be pink, right? I thought it was satire, because I could not make a clear logic bridge between the rules and your arguments in favor.

Both of these rules are artificial restrictions that inhibit innovation. Why and how do you think these rules have given the public us better performing machines today than they would have had without the rules. If anything, the opposite has occurred, since companies that make frames and components cannot be rewarded for creating lighter and stronger components.

If your defense is truly primacy of man over machine, then you would want to eliminate the bike as any influencing factor. Therefore, the lightest possible bike is best, and the most aerodynamic bike is best. If you are worried about light riders having an advantage, why not mandate a 30 lb. bike as a minimum? What is so magic about the current weight. And, what is so magic about 3:1? Why not mandate round tubes? These rules look like a naive attempt to help keep metal frame makers in business.

Eliminating both of these together helps heavy and light riders. For example, a light rider would be best suited on a more aerodynamic bike that will go faster on the flats and descents. Whereas, a heavier rider would be best served by an ultra light bike for the climbs. Aero comes with a weight penalty, so a lighter rider might actually choose a more aero and heavier bike. The key here is that the riders and teams can make better choices without arbitrary rules.

Your F1 analogy is misapplied. These silly UCI rules are more like NASCAR... where cars are mandated to run primitive carbureted engines with restrictor plates.

And, here are a bunch of other arbitrary UCI rules that I hope get killed soon too...

• ARTICLE 1.3.013 - The peak of the saddle shall be a minimum of 5 cm to the rear of a vertical plane passing through the bottom bracket spindle.
• ARTICLE 1.3.014 - The plane passing through the highest points at the front and rear of the saddle shall be horizontal. The length of the saddle shall be 24 cm minimum and 30 cm maximum.
• ARTICLE 1.3.020 - For road competitions other than time trials and for cyclo-cross competitions, the frame of the bicycle shall be of a traditional pattern, i.e. built around a main triangle.

The form of each element encloses a straight line
The top tube may slope, provided that this element fits within a horizontal template defined by a maximum height of 16 cm and a minimum thickness of 2.5cm
The joint between frame section must fall within the highlighted triangle whose two sides have the same measurement as the height of the section, i.e. 8cm
For road races other than time trials and for cyclo-cross races, the effective width of the head tube zone may not exceed 16 cm

• ARTICLE 1.3.023 - For road time trials and individual and team pursuit on the track, a fixed extension may be added to the steering system; in this instance, the height difference between the elbow support points and the highest and lowest points of the handlebar extension (including gear levers) must be less than 10 cm
• ARTICLE 1.3.024 - Any device, added or blended into the structure, that is destined to decrease, or which has the effect of decreasing, resistance to air penetration or artificially to accelerate propulsion, such as a protective screen, fuselage form fairing or the like, shall be prohibited.

This rule is jacked up because it is liberally applied to things like screw hole covers, cable covers, chainring covers, etc. that could be created as a blend of the structure

Oddly, this rule is not applied to brake fairings, which makes no sense

• ARTICLE 1.3.024 BIS - Bottles shall not be integrated to the frame and may only be located on the down and seat tubes on the inside of the frame

I agree with some of your views but definitely not others!

I don't have a problem with a minimum weight limit. Without it there's an incentive to drive up the cost of bikes for use at the top level and also to reduce safety margins in design. Most riders want light bikes, so development will continue despite a lower weight limit in racing. On the other hand I think it's reasonable to re-visit that limit every few years and ensure it's still sensible relative to the typical weights currently achievable on mainstream high end bikes. I understand the comment by another poster that light riders are disproportionately penalised by the use of heavier bikes but I don't particularly care! It reduces a physiological advantage rather than actually facilitating maximisation of it. Light riders will still have less to drag up the hill, they just won't magnify that advantage with a lighter bike as well (smaller/lighter riders could get away with lighter bikes than the bigger guys if there were no lower limits). Whatever way you do it, light riders will still have the advantage on climbs and heavier riders will still dominate the sprints. As long as the rule is consistent it's adequately fair. On the other hand, different weight limits by bike size or rider weight would make things complicated and hard to police.
On the other hand, aesthetics is NOT a valid design constraint IMO. A double diamond design may be what people are used to but that is not a valid reason to constrain us to it forever. You say it's important that the public can relate to the sport and therefore a bike should resemble what they think a bike looks like but that logic is faulty. The wider public don't care what a road race bike looks like. Anyone who is interested will quickly become familiar with any new introductions. The bikes are not an obstacle to relatability. If there's anything that is, it's incredibly emaciated looking riders and drug use. That's what makes the wider public feel that cyclists are different from themselves. The appearance of road bikes has changed quite a bit in the last couple of decades, most notably the volume of the tubes and the depth of the wheel rims. Is that a problem? No. The public are quite capable of keeping up with changes in bike shapes. By all means exclude such developments as rider fairings, recumbents and dramatically different wheel sizes but many of the other geometry specifications seem driven by a misguided nostalgia rather than any practical issue.

It wouldn't actually work that way. Grand tour riders are not trying to be the same. They are trying to maximise their strengths. Heavy riders cannot compete for CG placings because they cannot keep up on the hills. Trying to close the gap on lighter riders by choosing a lighter bike will not be anywhere near enough to change that. They will still aim to win sprints or time trials where aerodynamics and efficiency are of most importance and thus heavier riders will be the ones who use the heavier bikes. Also, often being larger as well as heavier guys they will often use larger frames and without a minimum weight limit, that will probably mean their bikes are heavier not only because they are favouring aerodynamics and stiffness but also because they simply have bigger bikes without the leveller of a minimum weight limit. The weight difference will get bigger, not smaller.

The same argument can be applied to the GC contenders. They will not choose aerodynamic biokes on stages where the heavier guys are using "aero" bikes. If there is a performance benefit to lighter bikes, the light guys will benefit most from them.

No, I kind of agree with 'flanders. Something around the current weight provides a reasonable safety margin. And I mean safety margin as in literal safety. Maybe you could replace weight with regulations for things like tensile strength and impact-resistance. But weight is a good surrogate because it's so easy and quick to measure.



Too heavy.



Nothing. It's just reasonable, and I think it'd good to draw a line somewhere. Maybe it could go from 6.8 to 5.8.. Or something. Unregulated would be a bad idea, in my opinion. The sport is dangerous enough. We don't need guys doing 50MPH descents on 8lb bikes designed to razor thin margins of shock-resistance, etc.

All the rules you mention have a purpose. I agree that some of them, like a fairing rule, are inconsistently applied and ambiguously worded. But you have to come up with some set of rules to avoid people riding faired recumbents. And most of those rules are there to prevent effective recumbent positions. You can't just have a rule that says "No recumbents" because then people will say, "Oh, this isn't a recumbent position, I just happen to be really horizontal." That's where those measurements come into play.

I like the bottle rule too, as a bike racer. Because it makes feeds easy and standardized. I can swap bottles with other riders, no need for special bottles or processes for individual bikes. I could see maybe eliminating the rule for TT to further eliminate the space between triathlon and TT bikes - which would certainly make life easier for manufacturers.

So, yeah, I'm all for tweaking some rules. But I think the vitriolic anti-UCI stuff kind of glosses over a lot of legitimate issues.

If you know the purpose of these seemingly arbitrary rules, what are they? Serious question. Folks are making up justifications like "safety" for some, but is that really behind the weight rule? If so, that is ridiculous, because materials and technology change rapidly, so the rule should tie to reality, not an imaginary number. On that subject, why is 30 lbs. to heavy. Why is 15 lbs. reasonable and 14 lbs. or 13 lbs. unreasonable? Unless the origin of the current weight is documented somewhere, then no weight is too heavy or too light.

The UCI has value as a governing body, but it also has many rules like these seem arbitrary or designed for protectionism (like steel frame builders).

The bottle rule is totally stupid. Really. It has nothing to do with your ease of feeds or bottle swaps. That standardization happened organically without UCI intervention. The bottle rule is only about placement. For a time trial bike, it is ridiculous.

The whole fairing ruleset is broken and needs a total rewrite. I doubt the rule as it is written is targeting recumbents. The double-triangle geometry rule effectively nukes recumbents.

It's sports.

All sports have arbitrary rules.

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That's a balk.

Case in point....

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Weight is a terrible surrogate for strength. Go check out the bikes at Walmart and tell me what you find.

We don't need regulations, manufacturers already have plenty of incentive to build bikes and parts that hold up. Having stuff fall apart in major racers is very bad publicity. Now they will also have a strong incentive to build them light. Pinarello will need to stop being lazy for instance. And the manufacturers who have already been building light for the consumer market can quit putting weights on their bikes.

Danger? There are plenty of dangerous aspects to racing, and "fragile bikes" are and always will be far down the list. You gotta remember, this weight rule is pretty recent, and bike racing has had a long history without this rule. It's completely unnecessary. Riders want bikes that will hold up and handle decently as well. There is nothing new about this.

A fixed bike weight is silly no matter what it is. No reason why a 200 lb rider should have the same weight bike as a 100 lber. This rule has had a negative effect on small climbers. Grand Tour winners are usually TT experts, because the small guys are unable to gain much if any advantage in the mountains. That will change now. We should see more yoyoing in leader's jersey and more interesting GTs.

I'd argue not that far. Every year I see cracked equipment from what was apparently "just riding along scenarios." They're not very well publicized because usually the cracked frames are quickly whisked away to avoid sponsor embarrassment.

Walmart analogy is dumb. Yeah, it's not that great. But I don't think we want tensile strength test rigs at bike races. Weight sets a very, very easy metric.

No, it's reality.

In every single sport I've ever been involved with there's been rules that seems arbitrary. And a cottage industry of "outrage" at the stupid rule-making body. But, generally, the rules are just something annoying installed to avoid something worse.

We could get rid of all those fairing, 3:1, and saddle-and-bar position rules.

But then some asshole is going to show up with a faired recumbent. And you have to be able to point at a rule that says he can't do that.

I told you. Faired recumbents which would blow away every UCI-legal bike made now (on flat terrain).

If you were the UCI would you allow them?

If not, what rule would you make that bans them? You can't just say, "No faired recumbents," because rules have to be specific and measurable. Or else they will be broken.

It's not easy coming up with a set of rules to do that once you think about it for a minute! It's not easy being a governing body.

I wrote the balk comment jokingly. But in seriousness, the purpose behind rules like a balk and infield fly (continuing with baseball and some if its frequently cited odd rules) is that there is a stated purpose behind the rules that players and fans can understand, if they choose to read the rules. The UCI's fairing, saddle position, bottle location, weight, etc. rules do not seem to have a documented purpose. Therefore, they appear arbitrary.
But that is you making up the association between these rules and recumbent. I have not seen that association in the UCI rulebook. Correct me if I am wrong, if UCI has a documented association between recumbents and their weight, fairing, bottle position, saddle position, etc. rules. The only rule that seems to target recumbent bikes, although without explicitly citing them, is the double triangle rule.

Easy but useless. Like I stated, we don't need a regulation for this. The players already have plenty of incentive to make bikes durable enough.

The purpose behind the infield fly rule and the balk rule are still arbitrary, even if the players and fans can understand them. It still comes down to MLB deciding that that they want the game to be played in a certain way.

If you want to talk about technology and innovation in sports, MLB still allows only wooden bats. There is a reason for that rule, but that doesn't make it any less of an arbitrary reason. It still comes down to "the rule is this way because we want the game to be played a certain way"

UCI is the same. They want the sport of cycling to be played in a certain way, with certain types of equipment.

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My cynical self thinks that the WFSGI will somehow tie the weight rule change to an across-the-board adoption of disc brakes...otherwise, as you note, they'll be working against themselves in trying to get riders to use them. It's long been posited that if you want to quickly "kill" disc brake use in pro road racing, just lower the minimum weight limit :-/

That said...I've always thought that using the weight limit as a proxy for strength/safety specs was just a lazy approach to the issue...

BTW, the 3:1 ratio rule may be going away (I thought it already had?), but as I understand it, the absolute width and depth limits still apply for frame and fork sections.

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This is true, but at least the dorky rules in MLB, NASCAR, etc. are a little more transparent to me than UCI. For example, I am totally cool that the infield fly prevents the defense from an easy double play. At least I know why it is there. And, I am cool that the balk prevents the pitcher from fake moves to throw out a base runner. And I am cool that NASCAR uses restrictor plates for car safety to keep speeds down. (Though, I don't get why the engines are carbureted in the first place.) As you say, those are designed to play the game a certain way.

But, tell me why the nose of the saddle must be 5cm behind the BB. Andy why must a saddle be horizontal? And why is the length of the saddle so narrowly defined? And why must water bottles be inside the triangle in a tri bike? And, why the magic 15 lb. weight? Why can a tube be elongated to 3:1, but not 4:1 or 5:1? And why the 10cm limit on stack height for TT extensions(though, the thought of super-tall extensions is a bit scary)? Those rules are not transparent. It is the lack of justification and transparency that makes UCI rules seem arbitrary.

Great analogy. MLB and the UCI both seem to be stuck in a time warp at times.

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"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
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Already gone for frame & fork, which do still have to adhere to the absolute width and depth limits as you note (3.2:1...woohoo!). 3:1 still applies to components like seatposts and handlebars.

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Carl Matson